The Outrider flipped his hair back, fingered his stubbled chin, and gazed at the lab with dismay. Then, on rubbery legs, he padded across the floor to the campfire.
Jindigar wasn't sure if he was responding to Threntisn's plea for help, or if he was arrowing toward Krinata, influenced by the hivebinders' inaudible but compelling song.
Absently helping Threntisn to his feet, Cyrus said over his shoulder toward Krinata, who was still kneeling between Threntisn and the Rustlemother, "Jindigar's, should I go with Threntisn or am I on duty?" Then his eyes fixed on Krinata, and something different about her awakened a blaze of hope. Me bent as if to cup her shoulders in his hands, to finally take possession of his wife, but Outrider training held. He asked, "Arc you Dissolved? Is it over?" It didn't take an Emulator to see that the human was affected by the hivebinders' fullsong whether he could hear it or not.
Krinata could find no words, but Jindigar rose and answered through her, "//We are still bound.//" The two Oliats, like the hive and the Archive, were linked, interlinked, and cross-linked by such a tangled webbing that Jindigar could see no way out for them.
Krinata turned to look up at Jindigar, and all her longing for Cyrus sharpened by the fullsong poured through the link and out along the double pattern of linkages into all the officers. Darllanyu moaned.
Both sets of Oliat linkages thrummed deeply to the hive's fullsong, blotting out Threntisn's voice explaining to Cyrus what had happened as he dragged the human away toward the lab room.
On a surge of fullsong too powerful to resist Jindigar became lost in Krinata's large black eyes, swimming in her pain, pierced to his core by her dashed hopes. Shame overwhelmed him. He, who had been regarded as prince of a whole species, had not fulfilled his promise to Cyrus, while Cyrus, lord of a minor Territory, and Krinata, Lady of Zavaronne, had lived up to their titles.
Her face, turned up to him, was white against the black of her gracefully swaying hair. Her face was a work of art, her body a statement carved from health and vigor strengthened by adversity. Her proportions bespoke subtle harmonies. Her movements flowed from some secret fastness beyond mortal knowledge.
From that fastness she had looked gently into his soul and granted him absolution for the worst of all crimes.
Shivering with awe before a greatness he could never attain, Jindigar sank to his knees before her, able only to efface himself and hope to be granted the touch that would be life itself.
It's the fullsong. He had never felt this way except at the threshold of his wedding trial.
He swallowed, acutely aware of the sensitized tissues of his throat and neck, the glands throbbing mercilessly. Without volition his hand drifted toward Krinata’s cheek. //Takora—I wanted you—I always hoped one day—//
She shied from his touch, hardly letting his fingers brush her lips. //It can't be, now—it can never be.// Her eyes shifted toward Darllanyu, bringing several ambiguous linkages into play. Under the stimulation of the fullsong each officer responded, setting both networks of linkages shimmering, blurring into one another. Jindigar was as aware of the delicious tremor pulling Darllanyu toward him, as he was of Llistyien and Venlagar reaching for one another, and Zannesu stroking Trinarvil's throat in plaintive question, and Trinarvil agreeing, //I will teach you, youngster, how this is done. And then– we will see.//
Jindigar curled his fingers into his palm, hoping the pain from the tender, developing nail roots would break him out of it, hut still he could not take his eyes off Krinata. He swallowed again, finding the unmistakable taste of arousal seeping from long-unused glands. The fascination of that ache echoed in five other Dushau throats grew to override all thought of the Oliat's predicament. Jindigar reveled in the deft female touches easing two other throats over that first, delectably painful, stretching.
Darllanyu was ready. He had only to reach for her. Her lingers had nursed him through that very first Renewal onset when there had been real pain that had dashed arousal after arousal to nothing. He would not put her through that again. His fingers yearned to show her what they had learned since that first crude eagerness. But the very thought of Dar's touch set the linkages to wobbling unpleasantly, driving his eyes back to Krinata; where they rested and feasted hungrily, the linkages singing a promise.
His breath came in short bursts, in sync with the human pattern. He felt her aching marvelously in a very different place. But it was very much the same sensation, a body's way of demanding, Join with me.
All at once he needed her as he had never needed another in all his life. And it was mutual. The forces loose in the Oliat drove them together, urge upon urge, wave upon wave, insisting that the two Centers must become one.
Krinata's human fingers floated to his fisted hand and hesitated. Jindigar's diaphragm locked as he waited for the touch of human skin. With exceptional sensitivity she uncurled his lingers, her touch on his swollen nail beds unbelievably intimate. Then she cradled her cheek in the palm of his hand, positioning his longest finger at the point under her jaw where the most sensitive female gland should be, and a single tear leaked from her eye. Ill love you too. I always have.//
His response came from his whole body, his skin raising in tiny bumps, straining for contact. His hands slid down around her throat—but there was nothing there except corded muscle and stiff tendons. He knew there was no receiving tube under her tongue, either. He would only hurt her terribly if he let his hungry lips join hers, for he could not stop the reflexes now.
//Jindigar—// prompted Darllanyu, ready to take him and extract all that his glands could produce.
He had promised her. He had lit the marriage flame for her. He would not—did not want to—forsake Darllanyu. But he could not tear his gaze from Krinata. The Oliat would not let him tear his gaze from Krinata. //Dar... // It came out as half groan, half plea.
Darllanyu's seven-fingered hands reached for his neck from behind. The filaments of her skin inserted themselves among the filaments of his skin, and she held the touch at that distance, seductively stimulating, infinitely promising.v,
The special warmth spread in waves from every gland she stroked, and through the linkages he felt Darllanyu's glands responding and knew the incomparable sensation of mutual gratification. He wanted to turn and stroke her throat, lock his mouth over hers and let it finally happen, but he could not break away from Krinata. It was as if the very linkages had tuned to the fullsong, rich with overtones of the worldcircle and Dushaun, hot, urgent, and demanding that they satisfy each other.
Krinata was perfectly still with his hands around her neck, his fingers brushing her rubbery skin. Her eyes were half lidded, her lips parted in the barest hint of a Dushau woman's invitation. The round humps of her mammary glands strained her shirt as she gasped with each of his movements. And with each aching wave through her body, oddly enough, her linkages came closer into balance, the strain on the dual-Oliat lessened. And faintly—oh, so faintly—under the fullsong came the shaleiliu hum, not the deep, grinding bass the four-way meta-Oliat had produced but the higher octave of Jindigar's own Oliat.